| Number 126 | September 28, 2001 |
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This Week:
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Greetings, It's important to keep a sense of humor at all times, especially in times like these. Don't worry, I'm not going to spring a bunch of bad-taste jokes on you this week. The "Comic Relief" piece has to deal with one of the most important industries in any modern capitalist economy: the Advertising Industry. I always find them good for a laugh, and they seem even funnier than usual since September 11th. I hope you'll see what I mean when you read it. I ran out of room again this week so, although I thought this would be my last issue focused on the events of September 11th, it looks like I was wrong again. I wanted to make room for some more good news in the midst of all the bad news (including media reports on Wednesday that "military operations will not be the primary piece" of the Bush administration's anti-terror campaign) That stuff will have to wait until next week. I appreciate all the readers who responded to last week's Notes. There were a lot of you! And that issue apparently got sent all over the country by other enthused readers, and even got read before a congregation at a church service last Sunday. Thank you to all! ‘Til next space-squeezed week, Nygaard |
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Long-time readers are aware that I derive great amusement from perusing the advertising press (admittedly, it's an amusement tinged with horror). What readers may not know is that I took to the stage a few years back in an attempt at stand-up comedy, hoping to perform some Lenny Bruce-style satirical humor. My career was exceedingly brief, however, which I blame on the advertising industry. Specifically, on their success in increasing the public tolerance for absurdity to the point that most people have been successfully inoculated against satire. So don't look for me on Leno anytime soon. Like many of you, I imagine, I have been a little humor-challenged in the dark days since September 11th. Finally, just one day before the deadline for this issue, the advertising industry came to my rescue. In the Business section of New York Times ("All the News That's Fit to Print") of September 27th appeared the headline "Red, White, and Blue Christmas: Marketing Seeks Proper Tone to Match the U.S. Mood." Lamenting the difficulty of selling luxury goods to a population that has been served a dramatic reminder that the Best Things In Life really are free, the article is filled with hilarious and, I think, quite revealing remarks about U.S. culture, circa 2001. "...retailers are grappling to find the right mix of commerce and sensitivity in the weeks after the attacks," intoned reporters Leslie Kaufman and Constance Hays. Commerce & Sensitivity. Now there's a match made in heaven, don't you think? I don't mean to pick on the Hasbro toy company (I like Mr. Potato Head!), but it was they who were planning to profit big-time this fall on a new game called POX, which they bill as a "game of alien creation and universal destruction." The point of POX is that kids can go around and, using their own POX character called an "Alien Infector," infect all the other kids with an alien virus. And it can be done without the other kid even knowing you are a threat! It's apparently a little difficult to market a xenophobic biological warfare game these days. Still, the Times tells us that "until a couple of weeks ago...POX looked like it was on its way to becoming the new hot toy." The Times article notes that "Americans are being encouraged to shop, both as an act of patriotism and to help them get on with their lives after the attacks." A Wal-Mart spokesman made clear that no concept is too sacrosanct to be above use as a marketing tool, saying, "You can be sure that the overriding theme in the stores will be patriotic." I am inordinately sure. A couple of pages later in the same day's Times, the regular advertising column announced that "Consumers Indicate They Want Companies to Respond to Attacks in an Optimistic Manner." Another tall order, to be certain, but no doubt Madison Avenue is up to the task. I had to stop reading after I ingested the following priceless comment, delivered by an executive of one of the nation's top advertising agencies: "People are looking for advertising to remind them of the things that are truly important and relevant in life, and to guide them in ways to better realize those experiences." Imagine trying to satirize a comment like that. Where is Lenny Bruce when we need him? |
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One of the most abused and misused Islamic terms to appear in the Western media is the term "Jihad," or "Jehad." Most Americans who haven't made a serious effort to go beyond what is fed to them on their televisions probably think that a "jihad" is a Holy War, specifically one waged against the West. And who could blame them? The local paper routinely defines the term for its readers by following the word "jihad" with a parenthetical definition ("holy war"), or sometimes simply by using a comma like so: "jihad, or holy war..." However, I have a Palestinian friend named Jehad who disabused me of this idea long ago. (Not that he needed to. It had occurred to me that it was unlikely his parents had named their son "Holy War.") My friend told me that he was unable to translate his name into English in a precise way, but he said that the concept of Jihad had to do with a striving, or perhaps a struggle, toward a more pure or perfect life. He said that it often refers to an internal process of attempting to be more in line with the teachings of Allah, of an internal striving. It can have a meaning that takes in the concept of war, he said, but there is disagreement among the scholars I checked with whether or not such a war could ever be anything but defensive. You can see that the word "jihad" is a simple word with a complex array of possible meanings, as is the case with many words in many languages. A simple dictionary usually is of limited use when trying to explain why some people get upset when you use a certain word. Take the word "crusade" as an example. When Mr. Bush used the word to refer to his planned incursion into heavily-Muslim South Asia, he discovered that it has a little different meaning there than it does in Dallas. This is the kind of ignorance that can get a lot of people killed. The fact that most Americans have a very specific, and very wrong, understanding of a key Islamic concept tells us much about the nature of the "knowledge" that we can glean from the corporate press. Keep this in mind as you "learn" in the coming weeks about Pakistan, about the mujahadeen, about the Q'uran, about martyrdom, and about lots of other things you may never have considered before. Like most important concepts, these things are impossible to understand without loads of context. Unfortunately, the supplying of context is expensive, so don't expect to get much of it from your TV or daily paper. Think about that as you consider the things you've "learned" from the corporate media in the past couple of weeks. Then think again. By the way, in case you've never heard the phrase "Harbun Muqaddasatu" and are wondering why I chose that title for this piece, it means "Holy War" in Arabic. |
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For decades, the maintenance of the U.S. military-industrial complex depended upon the existence of the Soviet Union, or "The Evil Empire," as Ronald Reagan liked to call it. Since the collapse of the USSR, our military has been flailing about looking for the next "Evil Empire" to use in justifying its outrageous budget, now more than $300 billion per year. Perhaps the most discouraging long-term effect of the events of September 11th is that they marked the delivery of The New Evil Empire into the laps of the leaders of the American military-industrial complex. Vague though it may be, now The Evil Empire is "Terror," or rather a "global terror network," upon which we have now declared "war." While our leaders cannot say exactly who is in this terror network, whoever they are they are not like "us." The "President" said it very clearly in his speech of September 20th: "This is civilization's fight. This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom." He went on to say that "Freedom and fear are at war" and "have always been at war," as have "justice and cruelty, and we know that God is not neutral between them," underlining, perhaps inadvertently, his earlier comment that the United States is on a "crusade" against terrorism. "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," Mr. Bush continued, echoing perfectly the refrain that dominated the 45 years of the "Cold War" between the Soviet Union and the United States. The existence of a shadowy and diabolical enemy during those decades was used to justify—indeed, demand—the diversion of trillions of dollars from programs addressing human needs to the construction and maintenance of what came to be known to some as the National Security State. We can expect the newly-declared War on Terrorism to be used for the same purposes. The "President" was quite explicit on this point in his (apparently very well-received) speech of September 20th. "Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign unlike any other we have ever seen," he declared, adding that "this crusade, this war on terrorism, is going to take awhile." He didn't mention in that speech that it's also going to take some money, money which will likely be extracted, in accordance with the Cold War pattern, from the budgets for education, health care, welfare, Social Security, and other essential programs. On Friday, September 14th, a nearly-unanimous Congress passed a $40 billion dollar "anti-terrorism" appropriation as a sort of "down payment" on the new war economy just inaugurated to replace the old one. (For perspective, I reported in Nygaard Notes #80, July 28, 2000, that this exact amount of money, $40 billion, is what the United Nations Development Programme has determined it would cost "to provide basic sanitation and drinking water safety, basic nutritional needs, basic health care and significant education" for every single child in the world who needs it.) A headline from the Associated Press on September 26th about a speech by the Russian Prime Minister underlines the point: "Putin Says Cold War Is Over; Terrorism Is World's Big Threat," it said. And we can already see the beginnings of a new "non-aligned movement" similar to the one created in 1961 by countries that wished to remain neutral in the two-sided "Cold War." Iran's leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said to the U.S. last week, "We are not with you. At the same time, we are not with terrorists." (He added the widely-shared belief that "America is not sincere in fighting terrorism. It has other objectives.") Mr. Bush stated that "Our war on terror...will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." The selling of this preposterous promise depends on the American public believing two things. First, that such a goal is achievable. Anyone who believes this—and apparently many do—is suffering from a dangerous mix of naivete and a childlike belief in the power and the right of the United States to completely dominate a very large and diverse world. I encourage anyone who hasn't already done so to seriously try to imagine what would be required to attempt to achieve such a goal. The second requirement is the belief that the United States is somehow absent from the list of terrorist states. It is a remarkable, almost unbelievable, testimonial to the power of American propaganda that some of the most enormous acts of terrorism in the past century have completely disappeared from history as understood in the United States. During the so-called Cold War the United States supported the overthrow of democratically-elected governments in Chile, Guatemala, Iran, Nicaragua, and Indonesia, among others. American guns and bombs have been directly responsible for the deaths of literally millions of innocent civilians, whose crime in many cases has been simply not being "with us." Perhaps a half-million were killed in Indonesia alone in 1965, when the U.S. government OK'd the military coup that brought longtime dictator Suharto to power. Even now, we are maintaining a sanctions regime against Iraq that has caused the deaths of over 1 million innocents. Such events rarely enter the minds of the average American, yet are front and center in the consciousness of the millions of survivors in the countries on the receiving end. Mr. Bush refrained in his speech from mentioning our newest ally in the "War On Terrorism," General Pervez Musharraf. This man is the "leader" of Pakistan only because he led a coup that overthrew the democratically-elected government of Pakistan in 1999. Two wrongs, or a thousand wrongs, do not make a right. Nonetheless, one can't help but point out that, if the President were to fulfill his promise to "find, stop and defeat...every terrorist group of global reach" he would have to attack Washington D.C., the source of untold terror around the world for decades. |